Why Did Vandals Smash Red Sandstone Boulders at Lake Mead?

Climate change, overcrowding, Pierce Brosnan—the list of existential crises facing our beloved national parks seems to expand every day.

Alas, the threat generating headlines this week is not new but is equally vexing. The menace? Dudes pulverizing zillion-year-old rock formations seemingly just for the heck of it.

This situation played out at Nevada’s Lake Mead National Recreation Area on Sunday, April 7, and video of the incident made the rounds on social media a few days later. A park visitor shot video of two men destroying sandstone outcrops along the popular Redstone Dune Trail, a short hiking loop on the western edge of the lake. The clip shows the two guys using their legs and arms to push sizable red boulders off of a cliff—a practice known as trundling. Each boulder slams into the rocks and explodes into 200-million-year-old dust particles. A young girl standing behind the men can be heard screaming “Daddy don’t fall!” in the video.

“Why on earth would you do this to this area that’s so beautiful? It’s one of my favorite places in the park and they’re up there just destroying it. I don’t understand that,” Haynes told Fox affiliate KVVU.

“It’s pretty appalling, it is kind of disgusting,” he added.

NPS officials across the country regularly deal with vandalism, and in recent years areas of Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, and even Acadia National Park have been tagged by graffiti. In January 2022, someone etched initials and the date over ancient petroglyphs at Big Bend National Park.

But the intentional destruction of geologic formations—done in broad daylight, nonetheless—spurs a different type of anger, especially when you see it with your very eyes. You can paint over graffiti or sandblast it from a wall; you cannot glue a sandstone boulder back together. And I think everyone watching the video clip can relate to the operator of the camera, who at one point utters “But why?” After all, the whole point of encircling these cliffs in the protective barrier of public land is to prevent their destruction.

Alas, I have no answer to why these guys were smashing rocks, and it’s tough to assume a motive since the men in question are staying quiet. To me, this does not look like preventative trundling, which is the act of knocking down choss from a precipitous perch in order to prevent deadly rockfall. Plus, I’d rather have a Park Service employee go on rock patrol, and not two dudes in jeans.

No, this trundling looks purely recreational—casual rock throwing done for the oooh, ahhh, SMASH! of it all. I will absolutely cop to having done this in my past. When I was 13 I once spent an afternoon rolling boulders down the butte near my childhood home with two buddies. Our fun was interrupted by a passing hiker who recognized the danger and destruction of our actions and sternly threatened to phone our parents. Yeah, it was a total buzzkill, but the guy’s anger did cause me to stop and ponder my actions, and I never did that again. Like most kids, I eventually grew out of that life phase in which setting fires and smashing stuff tickled every neuron in my brain.

I also read about the deadly outcomes of recreational rock tossing. In 2007 Outside published a feature on the death of legendary climber Pete Absolon, who was struck in the head by a boulder while climbing in the Wind River range. The rock thrower, a man named Luke Rodolph, had been tossing boulders off of the cliff and gleefully watching them descend. I think the final nail in the coffin for my own trundling desire occurred a decade ago when video circulated of two Boy Scout leaders hootin’ and hollerin’ as they pushed over delicate rock formations in Utah’s Goblin State Park. After the video sparked national outrage, the men claimed they were toppling the rocks to prevent someone from being hurt, presumably by accidentally toppling over a rock. It was a curious explanation, since most visitors at Goblin State Park are there to specifically witness the majesty of these precariously perched rocks. Those two eventually served a year of probation and paid a hefty fine.

Hiking next to cool red sandstone is why tourists flock to the trails on the banks of Lake Mead. And I’m prepared to arch my eyebrow at whatever explanation these guys provide—should park rangers ever track them down.